You have a time machine. What do you do with it?

[pecksniff]

Here are the rules:

You cannot visit the future, only the past.

You cannot change the past. What happened, happened. If you try to save Lincoln or kill Hitler, circumstances will prevent you.

As a tourist and a collector, you can do almost anything you like. E.g., you cannot snag the Hope Diamond because it's in the Smithsonian now, but you might snag some item of jewelry known to have mysteriously vanished in a past century. You can try to score with Cleopatra (good luck with that). You can attend (and with suitably concealable equipment, record) the premier performances of all the plays of Shakespeare -- or of Euripides.

What do you do?

 

[rae121452]

if you can't change the past, it would feel sort of tragic to use. on the other hand, there are a hell of a lot of 60's/70's rock concerts that i'd like a chance to go to. and owsley! hell, yeah.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

You cannot change the past. What happened, happened. If you try to save Lincoln or kill Hitler, circumstances will prevent you.

This doesn't make sense.

The minute you step out of the time machine and interact with the past, you're already changing it.

What you probably want to say is, your footprint into the past will likely not cause a big enough ripple/butterfly effect to change or alter the greater significant historic events which happened in your original timeline's past.

 

[rae121452]

there's also the fact that modern humans would be carrying a shitload of microbes and viruses that historic man hadn't encountered yet, much as how european contact wiped out the majority of native americans and how a ship from asia introduced the black death to the rest of the world. and vice versa, who knows what those suckers would be carrying that died out or mutated before the current era.

but, if we're just speaking on the broadest fantasy level, i'm going to the fillmore every night from the opening till about '73.

 

[RoryN]

Here are the rules:

You cannot visit the future, only the past.

You cannot change the past.

Then I'd basically be watching a movie.

I'll stay on the couch instead. Better surround sound.

 

[butters]

if you can't change the past, it would feel sort of tragic to use. on the other hand, there are a hell of a lot of 60's/70's rock concerts that i'd like a chance to go to. and owsley! hell, yeah.

for me, i'd go to some of the performances i never had a chance to:

pink floyd Echoes, live at pompeii
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-E7_VHLvkE

anything bowie in his ziggy stardust era

elton--before he got too drug-fucked

and i'd love to go back to the early 1800's london and skate on the frozen thames during a frost fair, see the amazing sunsets because of krakatoa(?)'s eruption


ooh, and nureyev dancing!

 

[pecksniff]

This doesn't make sense.

The minute you step out of the time machine and interact with the past, you're already changing it.

No, you're not -- because your voyage to the past was already part of the past, before you stepped into the machine. You just didn't know it.

These are essentially the time-travel rules of Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, and I have never heard them called unreasonable.

 

[pecksniff]

If you're a Christian, you could even meet Jesus. But bone up on Aramaic first. And don't bother warning him to stay out of Jerusalem.

 

[PaxNurgle]

I'd just go to any time period prior to 2020 and party like it's....any time period before 2020.

 

[pecksniff]

I'd just go to any time period prior to 2020 and party like it's....any time period before 2020.

Boy, that year already has a lasting shitty rep, doesn't it?

 

[IrezumiKiss]

No, you're not -- because your voyage to the past was already part of the past, before you stepped into the machine. You just didn't know it.

These are essentially the time-travel rules of Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, and I have never heard them called unreasonable.

ahhh, you're doing The Terminator fixed-loop style of time travel. No time traveling Reese barebacking Sarah Connor, no John Connor.

Heinlein's version is romantic because it solves itself with no mess. That's a human conceit, the physical universe is math mixed with uncontrollable randomness and harsh. I prefer Endgame's explanation, which makes more practical sense, in that you only made a new timeline to live within and left the old one that keeps going on without you:

 

[pecksniff]

You can try to score with Cleopatra (good luck with that).

Of course, the average Litster might have more interest in meeting the Marquis de Sade . . .

 

[pecksniff]

ahhh, you're doing The Terminator fixed-loop style of time travel. No time traveling Reese barebacking Sarah Connor, no John Connor.

No -- Skynet's purpose was to change the past, which this thread assumes is impossible.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

No -- Skynet's purpose was to change the past, which this thread assumes is impossible.

True, but Skynet was part of that fixed-loop version of time-travel, which it wasn't aware of and never considered.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Film Jesus taking a shit.

 

[Not Normal]

If I can't make significant changes, I'm going to see one of the times John Coltrane played A Love Supreme in its entirety.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

If I can't make significant changes, I'm going to see one of the times John Coltrane played A Love Supreme in its entirety.

At the Village Vanguard.

THIS.

I will die happy afterwards, if that's the price.

but if we're living in the new timeline, I will take advantage of what I know will happen to city real estate in the subsequent years. And also go see as many new upcoming shows at CBGB's as I can.

 

[dinny]

If you're a Christian, you could even meet Jesus. But bone up on Aramaic first. And don't bother warning him to stay out of Jerusalem.

Yeah, and don't tell him how he doesn't look like the white guy in the clean, pressed robe in Watchtower Magazine or the Ward Temple either... or tell him he's a Christian!

 

[Champakian]

This doesn't make sense.

The minute you step out of the time machine and interact with the past, you're already changing it.

What you probably want to say is, your footprint into the past will likely not cause a big enough ripple/butterfly effect to change or alter the greater significant historic events which happened in your original timeline's past.

Don't step on any butterflies...




(Now let's see who gets that reference.)

 

[Champakian]

No, you're not -- because your voyage to the past was already part of the past, before you stepped into the machine. You just didn't know it.

These are essentially the time-travel rules of Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, and I have never heard them called unreasonable.

That's a very good book; maybe his best.

 

[Chernosoth]

I would recalibrate the machine to make more time.

 

[pecksniff]

Don't step on any butterflies...




(Now let's see who gets that reference.)

"A Sound of Thunder," Ray Bradbury.

 

[hobbit.]

I'd remove the family jewels from Malcolm Glazers great grand father.

 

[pecksniff]

I'd remove the family jewels from Malcolm Glazers great grand father.

Then there is some infidelity in his purported line.

 

[islandman]

I would film the construction of the Pyramids and the Nazca lines and put to rest once and for all the nonsense about aliens helping us to do shit.